Ask HN: What is so special in working for Facebook? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What is so special in working for Facebook?

#31

Post by yaskyj » Sat, Oct 30, 2010, 9:43 PM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #24

yaskyj wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dilution doesn't really apply to these employees. They don't care about their amount of ownership in the company. All that matters is how much stock they get and what they expect the stock to be worth at IPO. If they've received 10,000 shares and the IPO is at $100, then they're millionaires by the end of that day (on paper, at least).

...at the end of the employee lockout period, you mean. =) By most estimates there are 300 million shares of Facebook generated in various capital rounds and whatnot. From my experience, if you're coming into the game this late you'll make some money with an IPO but only the founding members and VC groups will make fuck-you levels of wealth on the offering.

"at the end of the employee lockout period"

That's why I said it's on paper.

These employees have the opportunity to possibly make 10 to 20 years of their current salary in a day. Most people don't need more of an incentive than that.

Re: Ask HN: What is so special in working for Facebook?

#32

Post by citizenkeys » Sat, Oct 30, 2010, 10:14 PM UTC

GDH wrote: post #10

citizenkeys wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... but does any of that work benefit man-kind at all? More than 500 million people also use a toilet every day. So what? 500 million people and the most interesting thing on it is a "virtual farm". That's just plain ridiculous.

In the latest issue of Forbes Bill Gates said that he believes the toilet industry could be the next big boom, right now all of NA uses an old system with many design flaws. That's all. G

True about the Gates comment, which I didn't think at the time.

I wasn't trolling. I think the value of social lies with "peer production" which is a more evolved form of crowd-sourcing. Try and imagine a more sophisticated and brilliant Wikipedia.

Jeff Bezos is one of the funders of Kleiner Perkins new "sFund". I liked his comment at the announcement about using social to solve real problems like genetic engineering and climate change.

Re: Ask HN: What is so special in working for Facebook?

#33

Post by cmutiff » Sun, Oct 31, 2010, 5:51 PM UTC

It's not for the money - any of the talented folks could go work at a hedge fund and make 10x. The secret sauce is that it's a fun culture, great product, and the company has huge potential to innovate into new areas. And you get fed.

Re: Ask HN: What is so special in working for Facebook?

#34

Post by philwelch » Sun, Oct 31, 2010, 9:45 PM UTC

terra_t wrote: post #21

random42 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two startups I worked in so far (Incorporated in the US, working in India), have offered me stock options, so its certainly not a "Valley only" thing.

I've had people try to offer me stock options in the kind of companies that would never go public too. It's a very popular option for shady businesspeople with M.B.A.'s.

One company I am familiar with is a private company that will never go public. They give stock to their employees, and in fact, 100% of their stock is owned by employees (down from 49.9999%, when 50.0001% was owned by the founder). They have zero outside investors. The value of the stock is set by some sort of auditing firm, but there's no actual market valuation.

If this doesn't sound questionable enough, keep in mind that this is the only retirement plan they offer to employees and that upon leaving the company employees are required to sell back their shares.

Maybe it's totally legit, but it always struck me as very, very questionable.